In very exciting baby news, the first U.S baby born via uterus transplant is officially here, according to a press release. Although the parents have decided to keep most of the details private, we know the baby was born via C-section at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

“This woman was told when she was 16 that she would never have experienced this moment and it came," Giuliano Testa, M.D., principal investigator of the uterine transplant clinical trial at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, tells SELF. "That makes all of us extremely proud.”

This isn’t the first time that a baby was born to a mom with a uterus transplant—that happened at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden in 2014—but it is the first time it's happened stateside. Since 2014, just eight babies have been born to moms with uterine transplants worldwide, per CNN.

Women who undergo a uterus transplant—including the mom of the baby born in Texas—have a condition known as uterine factor infertility.

This means that either their uterus doesn’t function properly or they were born without one. Women typically discover they have the condition when they’re going through infertility struggles, Jessica Shepherd, M.D., a minimally-invasive gynecologist at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas who did not work on the procedure, tells SELF. If doctors determine that your difficulty becoming pregnant isn't due to an issue with your fallopian tubes or your ovaries, you may be dealing with uterine factor infertility, she explains.

Without a uterus transplant, patients with this condition need to turn to surrogacy to have biological children, Dr. Shepherd says. According to the Cleveland Clinic, thousands of women of childbearing age around the world have this condition. So far, this has been the top criteria for receiving a uterus transplant.

Still, the protocol to find the best candidates for a transplant is “very strict,” Liza Johannesson, M.D., Ph.D., an ob/gyn at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden who worked on the latest transplant in Texas, tells SELF. In addition to having uterine factor infertility, recipients have to be female, between the ages of 20 and 40, and otherwise healthy. They also need to have a strong social support network.

The process of becoming pregnant with a uterine transplant is kind of like regular IVF but with some crucial differences.

The first phase of the process is pretty similar to a normal IVF cycle: A patient is given fertility drugs (e.g. follicle stimulating hormones) to boost their egg production and then their eggs are harvested, Dr. Johannesson says. Once they’re retrieved, the eggs are fertilized using their partner’s sperm and then the embryos are frozen. Although it’s possible to harvest a patient’s eggs after the transplant, doctors prefer to do it beforehand so they can assess the quantity and quality of the eggs and sperm, Dr. Johannesson says.

After a healing period (at least a year), an embryo is implanted in the patient’s new uterus. “If you’re lucky, you have a pregnancy,” Dr. Johnnesson says. During the pregnancy, doctors keep a close eye on the patient but otherwise “the pregnancy is like any other,” she says.

So far, all babies born to moms with uterine transplants were delivered by C-section.

“In this initial stage of uterus transplantation, we don’t want to take any additional risks,” Dr. Johannesson explains, and there are still plenty of unknowns. For instance, “we don’t know how the uterus would react to contractions,” Dr. Johannesson continues. That doesn’t mean these babies won’t be born vaginally in the future, she adds—it’s just considered safer now because this procedure is still so new.

Those who have uterine factor infertility and are interested in receiving a uterus transplant can reach out to Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas (or any of the other organizations around the country that are performing uterus transplants) to see if they qualify, Dr. Johannesson says.

“We’ve accomplished something that we think will help many women in the U.S. and across the world,” Dr. Testa says. “It’s very exciting that we’re in a position to offer this.” Dr. Shepherd agrees: “This is definitely the start of something new and inspiring in the reproductive world,” she says.